Of course, Son Yongchan first had to find Edmonton on a map of the world.

The Korean midfielder became the first international player in the CPL era of the club, which will open training camp on March 1 ahead of its inaugural season.

“Yeah, I searched a lot on Google, you know?” said the 27-year-old native of Jinju, South Korea, approximately 280 kilometres southeast of Seoul. “And I asked people all over, Edmonton, how is it there? Everybody said it’s cold, but it’s nice, quiet. So I like it here so far.”

Admittedly, he doesn’t have much reason to venture out into his first Canadian December, outside of training.

That’s not to say Son isn’t well travelled. He spent three years in the Philippines with Ceres FC before moving on to Singapore’s Tampines Rovers in 2017. He is coming off a stint in India with Ozone FC of the I-League second division.

And wherever he goes, the nickname Smiling Assassin follows.

“I like that,” Son said – with a smile – obviously. “I’m happy. Soccer’s a fun game, so I try and enjoy it. I smile a lot, actually. I’m a very positive guy. So I smile always, but in the game, I’m very serious.

“One day I scored, I think the game was against the champion Malaysian club, I scored and a reporter made it that: ‘He smiled for the game, he scored like an assassin.’”

But he didn’t always have a professional soccer career in his sights. A late bloomer, Son didn’t step foot on the pitch until age 11.

“He started playing football a bit later. So just a quick study, I guess,” said FC Edmonton head coach and director of soccer operations Jeff Paulus, who first noticed Son at the a CPL open trials in Toronto. “I was fortunate enough to get him. Everybody wanted this guy.

“Stature-wise, he’s not a big guy, but he plays like he’s six-foot-four and he will be something different that we have not seen at this club.”

And he has big plans for the versatile midfielder.

“He will be a player we will use at central-mid, but he was used in his career to shut down other teams’ best players,” Paulus said. “So whenever the opposition had a very good winger, they would use him as a fullback and that winger would be invisible.

“So he gives us some real good options.”

And not so good for the opposition.

“His speed of play, his decision-making, his ability to see the game before anyone else on the pitch could see the game, he was able to play on one touch and hit passes that I’ve never seen a player hit in my six years of professional coaching,” Paulus said. “He just shows something different. He’s so fit, he’s so fast, the way he presses a ball gives no players time to even think and this is going to be our identity as a club.

“After watching him Day 1 at York, I spent that entire night watching video of him, hours of it, and I’m just sold on him.”

While the spotlight shone on Son as the first of seven international players allowed on a CPL roster, FC Edmonton also announced a trio of local signings Thursday.

Ajay Khabra, Ajeej Sarkaria and Bruno Zebie are all graduates of the FC Edmonton Academy, having won a national club championship together in 2014 before repeating the feat at the U-Sports level with the University of Alberta Golden Bears in the 2016-17 season.

“At the very beginning of this project, we talked about wanting this to be an Edmonton-based team. We’ve had an academy since 2012,” said Paulus, who has 17 signed player contracts already, including most of his internationals.

Four of the six that have been announced so far are graduates of the FC Edmonton Academy.

Ajeej Sarkaria is one of the player signing announcements FC Edmonton made on Thursday, Dec. 13, 2018, in Edmonton. Greg Southam / PostmediaGreg Southam /
Postmedia

“And we have another five or six players out of the academy that we will be signing in the near future,” he added. “It will be heavily local and I think our fans are going to be proud of that, and this isn’t a gimmick, these Edmontonians can play football.

“So I think this is important to the makeup and culture of our club, to our identity. We’ll be a team that plays good football because of these kids.”

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